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Jesse Jackson Takes Up Cause of Schiavo's Parents

PINELLAS PARK, Fla., Wednesday, March 30 - The Rev. Jesse Jackson visited Terri Schiavo's parents outside her hospice Tuesday, joining the religious conservatives who have encircled them for weeks in calling for Ms. Schiavo's life to be preserved.

The parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, said they had invited Mr. Jackson to join their vigil after seeing him on television criticizing the court-ordered removal of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube. Ms. Schiavo's husband, Michael, had the tube withdrawn on March 18, five years after winning a state judge's permission to do so. Now in her 12th day without nutrition or water, she may not survive the week.

A federal appeals court gave Ms. Schiavo's parents another thread of hope late Tuesday night when it said it would consider a petition for a new hearing on whether to reconnect the feeding tube, The Associated Press reported. The court, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, ruled against the parents last week in their appeals of rulings by a judge in Federal District Court, James D. Whittemore denying their requests to reconnect the tube.

Mr. Jackson, who arrived in a white limousine and met privately with the Schindlers before addressing the news media, called Ms. Schiavo's case "one of the profound moral and ethical issues of our time." He also phoned several black Democrats in the State Senate and pressed them to reconsider legislation, defeated in the Senate last week, that would require the feeding tube to be reinserted.

The decision by the civil rights leader to enter the Schiavo fray at the last minute surprised some fellow Democrats.

"I don't question the motivation -- I question the timing," said Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000. "The parents are in a last-ditch effort at this moment and have run out of legal options."

Yet Ms. Brazile also noted that eight members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Mr. Jackson's son Jesse Jr., had supported legislation that gave federal courts jurisdiction in the case.

Mrs. Schindler said she and her husband had reached out to Mr. Jackson seeking moral support.

"He's very strong," she said. "He gives me strength."

The Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, who has lobbied Congress and the Florida Legislature on behalf of the Schindlers, said he posed the idea last week of inviting Mr. Jackson to Pinellas Park. First, Mr. Mahoney said in a phone interview, he asked the Rev. Al Sharpton to get involved. When Mr. Sharpton refused, he said, he told Randall Terry, the anti-abortion activist who has served as a spokesman for the Schindlers, to reach out to Mr. Jackson.

"I suggested it to everyone I could see down there," said Mr. Mahoney, who left Pinellas Park this week to lobby lawmakers in Washington. "His coming says that it isn't a religious-right issue and it's O.K. for others to get involved, particularly in the African-American community."

Mr. Sharpton said in a phone interview that like Mr. Jackson, he supported resuming Ms. Schiavo's feeding, but that it would be hypocritical for him to advocate last-minute government intervention here after criticizing President Bush and Republicans in Congress for enacting the legislation that authorized the federal courts to step in.

Pressed on why he had chosen to visit, Mr. Jackson spoke only in broad terms and said the Schiavo case should not be a partisan matter.

"This is a global issue, and oftentimes the big issues of life are reduced to a single person who brings clarity," he said. "Conservatives and liberals can find common ground. It's a transcendent moment and a transcendent opportunity."

As it turned out, Mr. Jackson was not the only political figure to visit on Tuesday. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the No.3 Republican in the United States Senate, arrived shortly after 9 p.m. and told Mr. Schindler and Suzanne Vitadamo, Ms. Schiavo's sister, that "it's not right what's happening here." Mr. Santorum told reporters that he had previously arranged to be in Florida for a conference on Social Security. Asked whether he was still trying to intervene in the Schiavo case, he said that "I've been making a lot of calls to a lot of people," but added that "I'm not particularly hopeful."

Mr. Jackson said that he had sought Mr. Schiavo's permission to visit the 41-year-old patient in her hospice room but that Mr. Schiavo, through his lawyer, had turned him down. Mr. Schindler, who made a morning visit to his daughter, described her as "failing."

Still, the Schindlers said they had not abandoned hope.

"We still have her," Mr. Schindler said. "It's not too late to save her."

Talking to reporters Tuesday evening, Mrs. Schindler referred to Mr. Schiavo's girlfriend and the two children they now have. "Michael, Jodi," she said, "you have your own children. Please, please, give my child back to me."

In another turn late Tuesday, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office got a call around 4 p.m. from an anonymous man who said, "There was a bomb in the area, and it will go off if Terri dies," according to Sanfield Forseth, a Pinellas Park police captain. Dogs swept the area, though the police did not check inside the hospice, Captain Forseth said, because security there was already so high.

Mr. Mahoney said he would keep trying to expand the coalition rallying for the reinsertion of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube. The next person on his call list, he said, is Ralph Nader.

"I wish I could have been there to see people who probably cursed the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the past suddenly cheering him," Mr. Mahoney said of protesters outside the hospice. "I wish there had been a broader coalition of spokespeople addressing this from the beginning."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Lynn Waddell and William Yardley from Pinellas Park

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A version of this article appears in print on March 30, 2005, on Page A00012 of the National edition with the headline: Jesse Jackson Takes Up Cause of Schiavo's Parents. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe